The Gold of the Poets

Year of the Fire Monkey

—Poems and Photos by D.R. Wagner, Locke, CA

WE HAD BEEN WALKING

We have been walking out here
For a very long time.  The dark
Colored glass of this valley
Was making us sick.  It might
Have been the smell that roiled
Through, dressed like a five-year
Yearning for blind angels to
Minister to us about the great
Mysteries. 

God, she looked
So beautiful as the ornaments
Of sleep crept into her face.

We couldn’t stay here any longer
Let alone wait for the great
Wings to show us what was
Really meant by those circles
Beaten into the stones telling
Us to love all things.  There was
Unrest in the weather.

_____________________

VEILS

Coming over the edge of the slope
We headed toward the shore.  The
Sea was an exquisite blue-green,
Roiling, filled with floating ice.

From all sides the waterfalls boiled
Over the cliff edges.  Thin veils
Of ice formed curtains in front
Of the waterfalls.  They were everywhere.

Amazingly, it was warm with snow
Everywhere.  Here is where my studio
Would be, in this pulsating land
Separated from the world by my skin.

I watched the boats toss in the waves.
These would be my ideas today.
I would stand on the edge and move
My mind toward the deepest waters.

When I looked to find you,
You were gone.  It was like
You were never there at all,
Then I could hear you singing.
I began to write these words.


(first pub. in Medusa’s Kitchen, 2010)

 On the Sacramento River

UMBRELLA

You were thrashing in your sleep.
I kept seeing impossible moments.
Entire wrapped shapes filled with
Momentary miracles, an exposed breast,
a leg extended fully yet covered with
Sheets that could remember heavy weather.

A hand, seriously reaching, but for nothing
In particular.  I could barely move yet the light
Kept crashing through the window as if lightning
Were doing the talking.  I never saw your face.

Animals made gestures like this but they were not
As memorable.  Maybe it would have been different
If you’d used any words, but they had been abandoned.
I had no idea what you were and I could not see you.
Every move was a searchlight stabbing into the ragged
Edge of some dream I may have had as a teenager.

I was glad no one could see you so incomparable.
A haiku that went on forever and carried a gun.
I jumped from the bed to chair and hoped for something
Beautiful I could tell you.  A deep well of sheets with you
Inside, because it seemed like a dream.  You could have been
Devouring a unicorn.  A random madness, birthed in sleep
When no one should have been attending.  I never tried
To touch you.  You were your own umbrella just as you
Were your own rain.  In the morning, I said nothing.
You had a bruise on your right forearm.
It resembled a history ripped from the mind of an owl.

 River II

(Amices and cassocks are vestments worn by a priest celebrating Mass.)

WEARING AN AMICE

I am your rider who comes with tears,
Torn from the blindness of night,
Jammed into the breech with gunpowder,
Shot and thick wadding to cut some path
Into the world.  One that could barely
Be described to the soldier who comes to guard
As one would a precious text ripped from chains
That were thought to remain forever, and then suddenly
Drained from an unknown sleep and made to perform
As perfect a dance as might be imagined of a slave,
Still innocent enough to believe that a single dance
Could set it free.

Dressed in letters long ago of a sweetness
That still dares touch memory to transform
It into a food desired by such memory.

There are dancers collected in its stories
And I am a sea to such stories, crushed
Into the cold sands where transformations
Are collected, echoes that were once owned,
Countries long asleep and still full of a purity
That can draw blood to the skin and even
Burst the skin to blood, hoping yesterdays of blood
Might be written in praise of a darkness
Without a center, a bell believing in fear but ever
Reluctant to have its name as any part of any ship.

We will walk together, speaking each word
As the gold of the poets, symbols of old
Earths known only to a few who can call it family.
I reach to touch your skin, thinking it dew but
Shielded by songs always sung but never learned.

We assemble in white amices and cassocks,
Extinguishing candle after candle, the ritual
Long forgotten.  I touch the night with devotion.
It turns to broken syllables in a late forgotten language.
Peace be with you.  And with your spirit.
 

 Mask: King of Birds

THE KING OF BIRDS

The celestial forest.
A pine wind.
Storms in the mountains.

The stars have little place to sleep.
Always unraveling, a dumb mouth
Sits in the center of all birds.

The mute swan flapping its wings
Furiously.  I know your name.
I know the king of birds.

I have to ask you this
Before it gets too late
And you can’t find a way
Out of this poem.
Did you guess this was going
To happen?   That you might
Find yourself crying over nothing?
That you truly have been abandoned
In the forest and that the king of birds
Was going to turn out to be a lie
You told just so someone would
Marry you?

Even if you knew the names of your children
And could see the sacred heart hanging
Across a street, bold as a lie, blood dripping
From the crown of thorns as you fell to your knees?

I am afraid I understand all of this too well.
That you will take my hand, or I will take
Your hand and we will set out to find an altar,
But will wind up going to dinner and will have
Too much wine and the tablecloth with catch
On fire.  We will see the flocks of birds, so many
Different kinds, flee before us and you will ask
If I would like dessert and I will want you naked
And go stumbling across the floor, trying to dance.

We have guests in the house and you had asked
Me to tell the story of how I met the king of birds,
But no one is listening.  I can’t forget that time.
You light a cigarette.  I can see you standing
On the island just across the harbor.  You are
Wearing that yellow dress.  I am standing
On the edge of the pier, still talking, while they
Are untying the boat, starting the motor.
But I still am not done talking and the transmission
Is breaking up and who gives a shit anyway.
The night is so beautiful and not too cool.
The moon is on the lake.  We are going out
Now, before it is too late, to see the king of birds.

 Baskets

TOUCANS

My heart is full of toucans
With their light and hollow beaks
Clacking like empty typewriters
Capable of saying anything but
Unwilling to bow to allowing
Words unchained and delirious,
That such a world might be even possible.

I am undone in a tide of green midnights
Laced with silver salts and memories,
Near ashes, homeless, scratched by sand
Until whatever might be seen has been reduced
To a series of small, still spaces, too full of mystery
To be recalled as anything but press or cenotaphs
Erected by heartache and, barely able to reflect
Any sky at all, rears back on what once were legs,
Fills itself with arcs of prayer and stumbles forward
Claiming to be a lost son or daughter, once made of fire.

The loins twitch, snakes on rocks too hot to touch
Without a wash of waves clocking themselves
To the breath, insisting that it lives, but hung round
With the stench of time clipped to it, green-billed
With a shot of orange stolen from the forest canopy.

Why do such birds replace any real life, dragging
Themselves line after line, feeding on the fruits and berries,
Still so much a part of dreaming that they need a jungle
For their garden and build themselves of rainbows
And flocks of masks to have much meaning beyond
Feather-like tongues, bursts of color flashing through
The very tops of trees, a flapping of wings that in truth
Are stories full of winds, the hissing of steam in a rain forest?

 1937 Packard

SPINDRIFT

Filling the mouth with gems so no one will notice.
Clap hands when the sea bursts above wakeful dreams.
Tear the yesterdays from the wounds lifted by the wind.
I will catch your heart in my hands and rejoice
In the quarrels of the eyes with the waking world.

What song is this?  The melon still locked inside the seed.
The quince has barely made its announcement and already
Spring crouches in the ends of the branches, a surprise
For the children already caught in the swollen plum buds.
Already, the mornings are hazy through the early hours,
Colors of California February insisting upon a thousand
Greens, urging the trees to recall how the year might go.

When I was a child, I bet every dream against the new day.
I still laugh to watch Winter stumble over a run of warm days.
We wait for the moon to return.  Watch the smaller flocks of birds
Still hurry across the town to find kind company before the rains
Return, drunk on the quarrels of the winds busy at their flying weather.

Here, there is always the edge of the sea, the banks of the river,
The confused decisions of currents through the sloughs.
How precious each day becomes beneath birdsong and alfalfa,
Reaching as quickly as it might to rouse itself toward a lingering
Light, now left past five o’clock, clouds for hair, the sun, a secret child.

It is still cold enough in the dark to build a fire in the garden,
If only to stand about it and discuss what crops might be
The chosen ones in the beds not yet broken for seed.

We cook a soup from what grows near the fenceposts.
Sweet and bitter, soft with floating temples of green.
Even a cricket notices the loneliness of spindrift
Easing the heart away from cold and colder nights.
We choose the journey, then the journey chooses us.

____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

Nothing ever goes away until it teaches us what we need to know.

—Pema Chodron

____________________

—Medusa, with many thanks to Master Chef D.R. Wagner for our fine breakfast this morning!

 Lion Dancers, San Francisco

—Anonymous Photo

Glass Clowns and Bed-bugs

Poems by Neil Fulwood, Nottingham, England

—Anonymous Photos

THE BED-BUGS OF CTHULU

The tyranny of ageless depths
and the granite tombs
of forgotten gods;

the abrasive ocean
and the things that will rise
for which there are no descriptions

that vouchsafe sanity.
Aeons of bided time. The crumbling
of eras and civilisations, the fly-speck

of humankind a blip
in the scheme of things. Time
as a measureless certainty.

Millennia since the great Cthulu
turned his mattress, changed
the bedding, pushed

the tentacle of a vacuum cleaner
into the diabolical corners
of his lair. Centuries

since a chamois swabbed
surfaces back to a shine. Decades
between the shucking off of pyjamas

encrusted with the crumbly grit
of his galactic villainy.
Portents are the pause-button

of the gods. What is foretold
is guesswork laced
with the ripe priapism of fiction.

This, the great Cthulu in repose,
turning impatiently in his slumbers,
half-waking, half-dozing,

agitated in his restless
and Stygian sleep, a million
tiny cuts in the fabric of the mattress

releasing a microscopic swarm
across the purple-grey
of his ugly somnolence. The bed-

bugs cluster. The great Cthulu itches.

DEPARTURES

You’ve seen it in a thousand movies:
he or she stopped short by a poster
in a shop window or curved to the wall
of an Underground station. Camera dollies in
on a face sheened with possibility. Cut to:

airport at sunrise, Boeing in silhouette,
soundtrack swelling over the whine of landing gear,
the yelp of rubber on runway. Then she or he
pushing through crowds—backpack worn lightly,
cool in designer shades. Blurts of local colour,
vendors, taxi responding to glib hand gesture.

Then the montage proper: the rust-bucket bus
jolting along cratered roads; the hair’s-breadth
switchbacks taken at speed and never mind the drop;
the trek through rain-heavy greenery, movement
overhead and strange noises; sweat and a swatting away
of insects, the backpack heavier—then

cloud-break and sun; a promontory, the view
of the beach like an ad man’s dream.
                                                            Now you try—
travel agent, inoculations, insurance, house-sitters,
that eye-gouging haggle for an extra week’s
annual leave; transfers, luggage allowance, flight

delayed, the airport bar understocked and pricey.

WHISTLE SOFTLY AND WALK SLOWLY AWAY

The paint tin on its side, sumping
a matte white map of Iceland
over the hallway carpet. A pan
dislodged from the hob, bolognese
making a murder scene of the kitchen.

Bone china, in the family for decades.

Signed first edition with coffee stain.

Football and greenhouse. Just
whistle, whistle softly, and walk away.

Whistle softly and walk slowly away.

THE GLASS CLOWN

Spit on a rag. No, wait:
do more than spit. Drench it
in a wooden barrel
lapping with cold water;
or better still, scrunch

it in flecks of ice
chiselled by fishmonger
or bartender. Get it good
and cold against the heat
of blown glass. Wipe away

the greasepaint, the watery
pear drop of a painted tear;
take the split lip rictus
back to when the smile
didn't mean nightmares.

Swab off the patterns
of a shirt not far off jailhouse
stripes. Unpaint the bulbous
nose. Slide the springy wig
from the dome of the skull.

The clown is glass. The clown
is an intricacy of heat
and the glass-blower's art.
A complexity of shape
and form. And perfectly empty.

___________________

Today’s LittleNip:

Beyond the edge of the world there’s a space where emptiness and substance neatly overlap, where past and future form a continuous, endless loop. And, hovering about, there are signs no one has ever read, chords no one has ever heard.

—Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

An empty coffee cup is full of hope. Now there’s something worth voting for.

—Jarod Kintz, This Book is Not FOR SALE

____________________

Welcome back to the Kitchen, Neil! (Love those British spellings: civilisation, pyjamas… My spellchecker keeps switching them to American ones.) British Snakepal Neil Fulwood, who was featured in Medusa’s Kitchen on June 24, 2015, was born in Nottingham, England. His poetry has been published in various print magazines and online journals including The Interpreter's House, The Lampeter Review, Art Decades, Dissident Voices and VerseWrights. He is co-editor, with David Sillitoe, of the anthology, More Raw Material: work inspired by Alan Sillitoe (Lucifer Press, 2015; harrypaterson.com/2015/11/28/more-raw-material/); and co-administrator, with Robert Kenchington, of the Facebook page, The Leonard Bernstein Appreciation Society.

Here are a few links to info about Alan Sillitoe and about the anthology edited by Neil and by Alan’s son, David, in 2015:

•••www.theguardian.com/books/2004/apr/03/featuresreviews.guardianreview (The Guardian, 2004)
•••www.nytimes.com/2010/04/26/books/26sillitoe.html?_r=0 (NY Times obituary, 2010)
•••Sillitoe’s Wikipedia page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Sillitoe

And thanks also to today’s photographer-who-chooses-to-remain-anonymous for her intriguing bead photos.

___________________

—Medusa

 Neil Fulwood at British Poet

Alan Sillitoe's Desk

Only Poetry and Prayer

Anna Akhmatova

—Portrait by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin

—Poems by B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA

IN MEMORY OF AKHMATOVA
(1889-1966)

Past a discerning memory
of Anna Akhmatova
reading her poetry notes
with dim eyes over
the warm stove
and curved mirror
turning a white headband
on a courageous life
we witness to your laurels
as you press in your quotes
from your astonishing passages
on a lost lover and husband
with a warm quarrel of regrets
at the turn of a century
at lucid secrets emerging
at the miracle spin of her survival
calling out all of Stalin's criminals
as trembling whispers
of passing voices rival
in her paucity of letters
she does not yet send by mail,
for Akhmatova's nature expands
reaching us after death exhales
in knowing our time better
when on a winter pilgrimage
to greet Osip Mandelstam,
an exiled friend,
camped out with luggage
along the dark Russian river
who sailed away in exile
who shares another language,
in a passing visit over kvas
and a sparkling glass
of herbal mint tea,
it is snowing for the poets
with the snowy wind covering
her brown coat and bandana
by a smile then laughter
at the mouth of the cold Neva
everyone is awaiting saplings
planted under a bridge's beach
near fathomless shadowy
reaching branches of a knout
and blackened whip
when birch twigs will bend
in a coming deliverance
from the long fathomless thaw
for a Russian wintry penance
as children shout their warring
yet loving confessions of love
in a thousand wonders
of an Easter nascent rain
as you hear the priest's language
in purple procession and song
everyone wondering
at the spring's arrival
as this everlasting poet
covers over her tense glances
and she reaches out on the sand
to us in benevolence
from an age without end.

 Self-Portrait, John Ruskin

RUSKIN'S BIRTHDAY
(February 8, 1819)

Aware he is
a minor prophet
of art for art's sake
in a poet's lore and literature
dipping in his watercolors
over the aura he wakes up
for an Italian cup of coffee
and his painted murals,
with maps of geography at home
over London and Rome
tapping into the wit and culture
resting by his catalogs
of floral and fauna
at his Victorian age
with fine architecture
at the structure of wide lines
in his travel guide to Italy
with his Stones of Venice,
Ruskin adored all birds,
just turn the plumage page
of his brilliant words on plants
yet he was no sycophant
as an expert in ornithology
he even contributed
his sectarian share
with lectures on theology,
instead as a back-bench patron
connected with art and society
with his analysis of landscape
on a canvas of honorable basis
of Mr. Turner and Constable
with his beautiful variety of lines
in Sesame and Lilies
always on my aunt's table
with croissants and green tea
and a French Bordeaux wine.

 Lawrence Durrell

 

LAWRENCE DURRELL'S HOUR
(born February 27, 1912)

Petunia is all masked
for the evening ball
rushing from the library
to her Junior prom
dressed in a pink taffeta
puts on pearl earrings
and high heels in a moment
which she fixes
over a beige picket fence
whispers as a coincidence
of a quick sidewalk push
Petunia suddenly reveals
to tell me
she has a life-long
literary crush
upon Lawrence Durrell
with his travel journals,
asked me what I think
of his aesthetic sense,
telling her I was not yet familiar
with his exemplary
but probably minor poet,
yet later secretly learn
of this diplomatically
serviced and wisely
dramatically wrought writer
who was immediately
spotted by his English critics
for his literary character studies
yet arbitrarily asking myself
what his poetic life taught
for him to crave in literature
more cultural advance,
Petunia laughed out loud
at my evasive journalist answers
about love, jealousy and romance
in this petulant chance encounter
at this one forgotten event
on the curb
with a nervous question
to her in the sunset
if she could accompany me
to the dance
as a pageant tour
of high school movers,
and tournament of cheerleaders
waves to us in a limousine,
later in a quest of a Eurasian life
I will welcome Durrell's diet
of travel and diary
as this continual night-owl friend
climbed with me on divine heights
over explicit sex scenes
howling at the hectoring lovers
under his laurel covers
of The Alexandria Quartet,
that desire all the company
at the Copts Society set
with their family quarrels
out of Cairo with Egyptians
attired at his text,
by uncovering a manic betrayal
in the pride of complex novels
by which students freely
make out his dramatic destiny
out of an episodic history
as of sexting fragrant dreams
when he was a guilty libertine
brilliantly enlightening Justine
Lawrence Durrell still riding
over the Ionian sea
wondering of Jason's fleece
and onto the classic language
of his discovered Hellenic revival
as he sails on
as an Athenian to Greece.

WHEN MUSICALS PLAYED

When musicals played
invading a new luminosity
for me in adolescence
in a consenting language
on grandfather's Victrola
this talking machine
embracing shadows
of an engaged melody
at his own poor dream
in making a living
delayed from his final hours
of a forty-day rehearsal
we made our lyrical notes
interwoven in a duet
on the open piano
as we were in a recital
as he heard me play
a sonata of Beethoven
then he recited my poem
the words of a secret prelude
in English and German
within the key of G minor
in a quartet dedicated to him.

A BEAT VALENTINE'S DAY

A bard at a coffee house
always at his artistic best
picks up his packet
of avant-garde postcards
quickly counting nine
you may regard this Beat poet
with knowing affection
in San Francisco at City Lights
his sounding direction
riding on a motorcycle
over his invading grounds
as he is spot-on deciding to buy
the most clever of lyrics
over these poetic Valentines
along a bookstore wall
on this February Twelfth night
as he puts his literary signature
brightly red on the dotted line
and shares a valentine with guests
from West Los Angeles
who are about to visit him
at his backyard retreat
who read his prose
from his folio of keen quotes,
as he puts his feet up
over the desk
with newly discovered
yet not secretive love notes,
spilling and drawn out
in an artistic form fulfilling
his ideas on a colorful obelisk
that are beautifully designed
in starry skilled structure covers
as he slowly recovers
from his latest nature's outburst
at his last heavy metal storm,
here with shortness of breath
under a burlesque black book
from the Sixties pictures he took
of his art critic friend Elizabeth
that he seems almost reformed
waiting for the open theater's
comic humoresque to perform,
not wanting to throw a tantrum
keeping all St. Sebastian arrows
adjusted in his quiver
he discovers his own grave past
in the lines he must deliver
tonight playing
a dreamy young vital upstart
who waits for love
of an expressive tomorrow
resembling the grave Malvolio
reacting a bit grotesque
in a poetic text of Twelfth Night
as he casts his bright narrative
like a robotic blue fish
with a live line on a sinking hook
restoring up inky metaphors
by his outlook of good wishes
that make his history stand out
at rehearsing an artful solo part
by handsomely staring
into a double mirror
convex and concave
with all his troubles to behave,
and looks fairly misunderstood
remembering his first rendition
of doing Romeo and Juliet,
or at his first reading
at a starlet's picture edition
over daring movie sets
with charismatic vital actors
always bursting out dramatically
in temperamental condition
shouting about past regrets
cursing themselves for being
once of a good nature,
with the worst of pretenders
to engender their stand-up lines
and innovate for
their own personal nomenclature
so super-sensitive
and berated it seems
by any sex and gender,
among cultured and cultivated
the poet shilling the text
given out to drama queens
in those receptive lines
from his artsy picture book
as he listens and quietly divines,
weighing in on a '78 recording
of a soul on the basement floor
quietly reading Rimbaud
Baudelaire and Verlaine
by the casement window
near the stage door,
here the poet tries
in his masked shadowy word
to write free verse
about a wreck asking for love
as suddenly he runs
outside the studio
under a hammock of rain,
as twigs fall off the woody Elms
from the heavy breeze
at the last storm remembering
his past feat at a quatrain
when a flock of blue birds
from Capistrano
rested above the branches
at the back yard shed
near crabapple trees
feasting at bread in the nest,
explaining the moment
his eyes shut out the light
which would glow
on the soft elephant lamp
he built with his own hands
after the last ride in a night cab
when he paid the tab
from a lottery's advance
as a gift of chance
from the mayor's charity,
he goes off to the loft's bed
with only poetry and prayer
returning as his sole guest
from the masked ball dance
remembers the correct answer
about the poet
Giacomo Leopardi
on a snowy T.V.'s Jeopardy
then does a crossword puzzle
in the latest Chronicle,
not laughing about years ago
about the libelous article
on the lie of Mr. Bell
that daily city sports reporter
was revealed against him
before he was fired
that caused us so much unrest
the one in his Bermuda shorts
who is now retired
was hidden by unlocking
his Harvard clock by watching
unlawfully wrong statistics
so his kindred nephew
Rocky Arvid easily won
at our risky marathon run
when all we wished
was to court some wild fun
now it's water under the bridge,
the bard refills his forty years
in a cup of black coffee
with a warm memory
of many a Valentine
there in a fine wooden box
of black-and-white photos
in a studio backdrop
of Rudolph Valentino
kept at the back of a child Bible
that he once memorized
before he was riled up
at his first audition
on the hollow stairs
near Hollywood and Vine
letting the dim lights glow
on the unsettling words,
"Let you be mine."

 Mardi Gras Masque

Today’s LittleNip:

The heaviest impact of the work of art is in the guts. Art does not reason. It manhandles you and changes you…

—Lawrence Durrell

______________________

—Medusa, with many thanks to B.Z. Niditch for today's fine poetry!

 Massachusetts Bald Eagle

 

Your Little Rhizome Heart

Mushroom Caps
—Poems by Loch Henson, Diamond Springs, CA

—Anonymous Photos

HAUNTED LUNGS

The toxicity of your past
comes to haunt your lungs.

Could it be that the very

objects you cling to from your

past life, in its sentimentality,
are somehow suffocating
you?

What do you gain from such

crowded walkways?  Is the
patch of path remembered
worth the sacrifice?

Somewhere between
jettisoning the past and
making room for the present
is a place you can breathe.

_______________________

FALSE GROUND

Not every place your tender roots
seek to demand growth
may prove suitable.

Perhaps there’s not
enough sun, too much water,
hazards by way of creatures
who will find you tasty.

Perhaps there’s too much sun,
not enough water,
hazards by way of creatures
who will find you tasty.

And perhaps the little rhizome heart
of you knows before starting
that you have found well-fertilized
false ground.

_____________________

DREAM WRANGLER

Say what you will about where
they come from, dreams
are populated with images and
metaphors that mean something
in a language you once spoke fluently.

Why would I turn my back on

subtle information, spoken softly
so that only I can hear?

I sit, pencil in hand, and scribe
what I can of them in the pre-dawn
hours.

Elusive as cats, and at least as
finicky, eventually they become
habituated to my alert presence;
not tame, but at least tolerant.

 Sungold Tomatoes

KALEIDOSCOPE

If I could shatter and break down
all the pains and petty trials,
all the annoyances and discomforts,
all the great disappointments,
might they reduce to shards of
something that could serve in another
fashion to alter my perspective?

Could they become little bits of
color, be tumbled into less sharp
shapes?  Could they be jumbled together
and serve as the contrast to the pastel
propriety of “the typical”?

Would their presence allow the
iridescent potential of other things to
be revealed?

There is room in my mind
for the motley… the
varicolored… the prismatic.

____________________

BIG TIME POW WOW

“We’ll gladly share our culture
with you…if you share yours with us $$$”
proclaimed a small sign on
a jewelry vendor’s table.

We shared.

The fancy dancers wandered
the grounds, war bonnets on and
cell phones in hand.

The outer circle beckoned,
with wares on display.
Art.  T-shirts.  Blankets.
And jewelry.

The southern drums beat
a steady rhythm, as a piece
of fry bread found its way to us.

We sat and ate in silence, watching
the processions…intentional

(and otherwise)

My culture has war paint, too.
It’s called “Chanel”, and it’s sold
under glass.

Indoors.

____________________

FAR FROM HOME

Is it a relief or do you
get anxious when you
realize that you are
far from home?

What feels far to me

may not even begin to
seem like a day’s journey
to you.  My passport
hasn’t seen the amount of
exercise that yours has recently.

Trips to ethnic restaurants serve
as my big adventures right now

(and some trips are more adventurous
than others!)

It’s not the exterior landscapes
that I roam.   Learning the mind

from the inside, peering into
hidden corners…these journeys
uncover stained glass mosaics of
thought and feeling, monuments
from times passed, and other
features not often suitably captured
by the post-card of a poem.

 Chard

TIDY

My house is far from tidy,
and my clothes have run through
several seasons.  Let’s not even
discuss how old my working boots are.

Where I’m getting less messy is
in my heart. 

I’ve picked up after myself quite a
bit; there isn’t much I haven’t found
and tried to discover in here.

I uncovered a secret stash of
patience not long ago.  I’m hoping it’s
a lifetime supply.  It shows a few
stretch marks, but those often accompany
good things.

My courage was untied recently, and
it snuggled up right away with my ability
to acknowledge “I don’t know”…and
made me able to say so.

Reason has a prominent seat, and holds
court frequently with the other occupants.
It’s a good listener, which surprised me, but
It’s been hanging out a lot with compassion.
I can almost hear their conversations, and
they don’t keep me up at night.

_____________________

Today’s LittleNip:

A weeping grey sky
descends on my umbrella—
Bright daffodils dance.

—AK White

 ____________________

—Medusa, with thanks to Loch Henson and to the Anonymous Photographer (from our area) for a wonderful poetry-breakfast this morning!

 First Daffodils

Wiser Than Death

—Poems and Zentangles by Joyce Odam, Sacramento

BODIES OF CATS

Bodies of cats line the winter streets. I counted
three this morning. Their death spread over the
city. My regret exaggerated them. I could not
shake their presence. I did not want to look at
gutters—brief flecks of orange, shapeless gray—
somewhere, their mourners, oblivious yet.

Tonight on the news I hear of pileups in the fog—
black ice, black snow, three dead. I turn my
attention to randomness, grow vague and
distracted, let detail slip by me with no meaning,
give up the symbolism for awhile, write this poem
as if it means something I do not want it to mean.

________________________

CAT TIMES NINE

on the eighth life
the black cat lived
albeit with a limp
and a broken miaow

but he had yellow eyes
that slit the dark
and electric fur
to sting the stroker’s hand

he reached the eighth
life of his owner’s mind
to roam beyond the
adolescent now

wiser than death
superior to caution
courting more peril than before
testing his own ninth evolution

 
(first pub. in Of Cats Mini-Chap, 2002)

ON THE COUNT OF NINE

I

The white cat in the alley is new again—
it has lived there ever since
and never mind when.

It was then
and it possessed distance and time
that was yours

and mine—
we lived it together
and apart.


II

Something guarded the history
as if it was love.
And it was.

And it was a strong platonic sisterhood
of those who knew—
who owned white cats and alleys.

All this is true—the alley—the cat—
the blue coincidence—indicative,
without the correlation of a clue.
     
                        
III

The white cat remembers us still—
symbolizing time,
guarding both ends of the alley.

That we are old now is relevant
and the white cat is old, too,
but deathless.

We share
its nine lives.
The white cat simply stares at us and purrs. 

THIS TIME A CAT

Another death to fret about. This time
a cat—a gray one—
curled strangely, off to the left

on an entrance-curve of freeway
that compelled my glance
each time I passed—

going home
to no cat—
no more cats for me.

A week of this—still there
in vague and slow disintegration
making a dull flat tone of heaviness.

Today the cat was gone.
I was relieved—only a dark blue stain
marked where its death had lain. 


(first pub. in Of Cats Mini-chap, 2002)

______________________

OUR DOMESTIC CAT PRACTICING
HER WILDERNESS                                      

Our silver cat sits looking for her mouse,
patiently stares toward the gleaming field,
until she turns to patient silhouette.

The closing darkness, hiding what it owns,
holds itself real still: no breath of wind.
No twitch of fur.  No luck.  No sign of mouse.


(first pub. in Poets’ Forum Magazine, Winter 1997/1998)

RURAL

A wood fire in the
        old black stove,
a saucer of milk for the
            old black cat.
fire-shadows
        lapping at the walls.     

   
            

(first pub. in Of Cats Mini-chap, 2002)

GHOST

Some nights I can still feel the soft pounce
on my bed . . . as when the old cat
would wait for me to finally turn in.
                                          

(first pub. in Of Cats Mini-chap, 2002) 
 

______________________________

POINTLESSNESS

The point of this is pointlessness,
I keep trying to explain.
You, as vague as usual,
stare away in your other direction.

Take words, I say, throwing you a few
in broken sentences.
But you, still in love with cruelty,
turn up the volume of your deafness.

Let the cat in, I suggest,
let the cat out,
let it in,
let it out. Damn cat.

You, of course,
have no use for cats
though cats love you
with all their eyes and sidle up to you.

I am bereft, I plead.
Take this silence,
so tiresome,
I don’t know how to say it.

You open a page of light,
read it
with your lips,
and make a revision.

I drag you along in my conversation,
I need your provocation,
I need the way you look at me—
your un-reach-a-bil-ity.

You turn away from the
immaculate mirror of your face,
open the door
and let the cat out.

__________________________

Today’s LittleNip:
 
FOUND POEM

Needs
new home.
Gray
female cat
with
white paws
blue-green eyes.
Seven years old.

                                                  
(first pub. in Christian Science Monitor, 1996
and Of Cats Mini-Chap, 2002)

_________________________

Many thanks to Joyce Odam for her fine poems and pix today, elaborating on the Seed of the Week: When Cats Disappear. Our new SOW is Parades, celebrating Chinese New Year and Mardi Gras. Don’t be afraid to think metaphorically, as I said yesterday, like the duck family in the green box at the right, or think about other things/problems/events (fun or otherwise) that come along, one after the other. Send your poems, photos and artwork on this (or any other) subject—including Valentine’s Day if you’re not in a parade kind of mood—to kathykieth@hotmail.com. No deadline on SOWs.

Many thanks also to those kind folk who wished me happy birthday on Saturday. Threescore and ten. Wow. Unfortunately, Medusa is the only Gorgon who is mortal, so I’m always on the lookout for Perseus…

—Medusa

For more about “Found Poems” go to www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/poetic-form-found-poem/. 

You Are That You Are

—Photo by Robert Lee Haycock

A FOUNTAIN FLOWS IN FIVE DIRECTIONS
—Robert Lee Haycock

The gardener tells me to call him “You are that You are.”
I know that’s not His real name nor will He tell me mine.
He calls me “Mud” laughingly, charges me to address
Those who fly and swim.
Those who walk on four legs.
Those who crawl upon the ground.
They come when I summon them
And humor me but I can see in their eyes
That I am not in on this joke.
Even she who is of and beside me
Is willing to lie to me.
So what am I to call this winged one
With sword aflame?
(Wing?  Sword?  Flame?
That can’t be right, can it?)
Damn me but this apple is bitter.

 —Photo by Robert Lee Haycock

I NEED A PAPER BAG
—Robert Lee Haycock, Antioch, CA

The DJ drives my Pinto down a muddy draw and the snows above us are frighteningly beautiful.  Churches and bowling alleys unfold themselves but we must go, must have staples for the journey, piles of staples scattered in the carpet that no one will help me gather.  There are hundreds of pounds of unetched circuit boards to load and the keys have been hidden in a bowl full of rock candy.  My sister wheels the comatose tattooed muscle-bound drag queen past me and when I say hello he opens his eyes.

________________________

TOSSING NEWSPAPERS
—Robert Lee Haycock

Your lipstick hints at the color of your panties.
Does the carpet match the drapes?
Ludwig is in the garage again
For a fifth overhaul of finial fins.
I almost called this a roller coaster
But it’s more of a mad rat.
Beat me wif your rivvum stick.

 —Photo by Robert Lee Haycock

CATS, INHERITANCE
—Kevin Jones, Elk Grove

Inherited my father’s
Irish Setter.  I think she
Finally accepted the deal.

On the other paw, several
Cats have inherited me.
Some on the porches
Of places I’d just moved
In to: “Not much, but
I think he’ll do.”

Others, somehow born
In the aspidistra pot and
Who refused to go away.
Others, bush dwellers from
Next door who decided
To become house cats
With the first winter rains.

Old Toms, one eye gone,
A limp, but with a late life
Change of attitude: “I’m
No longer a warrior, but
I’ll let you live with me
For a while.
Maybe you’ll come
To understand.”

Still others have inherited
Me, blue eyed kittens,
Lost or left, and some, old,
The vet simply nodding,
“Yes, it would be good
To do it now.”  All gone.
I could begin to count,
But it would make
Me sadder that I am
As I write this.

Still, there is a huge
Spotted guy the
Neighbors named
Fluffy, who sleeps
In the bushes out front.
And there’s the young
Black shorthair who
Spends nights out back
On the patio.  I think they may
Be considering their
Inheritance even now.

 What's Hiding?

—Photo by Taylor Graham

BLACK ADVENTURING
—Taylor Graham, Placerville, CA

Where cats disappear into dark of night,
your cat’s gone to the laws of fight-or-flight.
You call from the doorway; you yawn and blink
at morning’s empty light. You pause to think
of owl, coyote, tooth and talon; fright

at what terrors go on beyond your sight.
Your cat—so stealthy in his wander-rite,
writing adventure with a tail of ink
         where cats disappear—

is gone, himself, now. Hungry. Does he slink
from door to alley, find a rock-wall chink
to hide in? Listen. When the wind’s just right
can you imagine, his nine lives pulled tight
about him, venturing the highway’s brink
                    where cats disappear?

 February Rock Wall 3

—Photo by Taylor Graham

MARIGOLD LOVES CATFISH
—Taylor Graham

Look sharp at the pushcarts full of fresh-caught
fish. Forget the organic onions, a dolly loaded
with cases of root beer, bad music blaring from
open windows, and somebody selling gilded
weeds. Felines don’t fall for all that devilry.
A lost-cat flyer on our mailbox brought us here.
Marigold, yellow tabby whose place-last-seen
was the outdoor market. How cats do travel
on a whim. We might not care but for the little
girl who loves him.

_______________________

GAMES

of Spring, games of Moon
above clouds, rain rattling the roof
and singing to the hills, finding its way
down grooves in soil that become creeks,
            moving downstream, under-
ground, blessed water too much to hold
with rust and metal pipes.
                           We cup our hands
to catch it, squint at sun finding the knife-
cut between clouds and horizon,
                through the blinds of our
eyes; feel the blood moving through us,
what the heart knows: our planet
                   still spinning on course, no
matter what our roofs do with the rain
and whether we can hold it.
                             Streams of water,
streams of light through seasons
and the phases of Moon.


—Taylor Graham

February Rock Wall

—Photo by Taylor Graham

THE ARRANGING ANGELS
—Taylor Graham

Come, angels of soldering and welding,
of silver-metallic seams and airtight joints
that once were sundered,
angels of wing-nuts and halo LED lights,
of pressure gauge and valves as sweet
as music; and everything
we’ve broken, neglected till it rusted shut,
forgot until it failed us, all this becomes
an angel’s mending song.

 Lion Dancer, Locke

—Photo by D.R. Wagner, Locke, CA

SILLINESS
—Caschwa, Sacramento

Peanut butter
And jelly
Sandwich

Praise John Sutter
And Miles
Standish

Release the rudder
And behave
outlandish

Coast Guard cutter
And last man
Standing

Clean the gutter
And make yourself
Handy

Heart a’flutter
And too much
Candy

Words to utter
And Silent
Sandy

Pompous clutter
And Yankee Doodle
Dandy

____________________

GRAVITY
—Caschwa

(inspired by “The Poem Cat” by Erica Jong)
He owns and abuses her
Yet she clings to him
Fearing the dark loneliness
Of a planet out of orbit

Day by day this stoic and pathetic man
Relies on his chattel to bring him
All the creature comforts of the universe
For free

He does not take kindly to interruption,
Especially those Garrison Keillor moments
When she pops his bubble to remind
Him of his immediate household duties

Quiet, woman!  Can’t you see I’m composing
A complex poem?  And no, it will not
Bring us any money.  Saved by the telephone,
She’ll talk hours with her sister

 Lion Dancers 3, Locke, CA

—Photo by D.R. Wagner

Today’s LittleNip:
 
Arise from sleep, old cat,
And with great yawns and stretchings…
Amble out for love.

—Kobayashi Issa

_____________________

Gung hay fat choy! Today is Chinese New Year (Year of the Red/Fire Monkey), though celebrations have already started and will continue all week. Fun stuff here: 
•••www.chinesefortunecalendar.com/2016 or
•••www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/festivals/spring-festival/chinese-zodiac-years-of-2011-to-2020.htm

And tomorrow is Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday/Shrove Tuesday)! Check out these websites for some history of Mardi Gras:
•••www.mardigrasneworleans.com/history.html
•••www.neworleansonline.com/neworleans/mardigras/mardigrashistory/mghistory.htm •••www.neworleanscvb.com/calendar-events/mardi-gras/history

So our Seed of the Week (this week a day early) will be Parades, since both of these traditions have grand parades at the heart of them. Don’t be afraid to think metaphorically, though—both of these events have a kind of in-with-the-old-out-with-the-new quality about them, too. So send your poems, photos and artwork on this (or any other!) subject—including Valentine’s Day, another cavacade, this one to celebrate love—to kathykieth@hotmail.com. No deadline on SOWs.

 Ducks in a Row

—Anonymous Photo

—Medusa, thanking today’s fine contributors for, as Robert Lee Haycock puts it, their “scribabbling and shutterbuggery”. We can never have too much of that!

 Mardi Gras!

—Anonymous Photo

The Poem is a Dance

Sugo

—Anonymous Photo
 

THE POEM CAT
—Erica Jong

Sometimes the poem
doesn't want to come;
it hides from the poet
like a playful cat
who has run
under the house
& lurks among slugs,
roots, spiders' eyes,
ledge so long out of the sun
that it is dank
with the breath of the Troll King.

Sometimes the poem
darts away
like a coy lover
who is afraid of being possessed,
of feeling too much,
of losing his essential
loneliness—which he calls
freedom.

Sometimes the poem
can't requite
the poet's passion.

The poem is a dance
between poet & poem,
but sometimes the poem
just won't dance
and lurks on the sidelines
tapping its feet—
iambs, trochees—
out of step with the music
of your mariachi band.

If the poem won't come,
I say: sneak up on it.
Pretend you don't care.
Sit in your chair
reading Shakespeare, Neruda,
immortal Emily
and let yourself flow
into their music.

Go to the kitchen
and start peeling onions
for homemade sugo.

Before you know it,
the poem will be crying
as your ripe tomatoes
bubble away
with inspiration.

When the whole house is filled
with the tender tomato aroma,
start kneading the pasta.

As you rock
over the damp sensuous dough,
making it bend to your will,
as you make love to this manna
of flour and water,
the poem will get hungry
and come
just like a cat
coming home
when you least
expect her. 

______________________

—Medusa